-The Hindu MSF Secretary General Jerome Oberreit on the increasing threat to affordable health care worldwide. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors without Borders, the international humanitarian medical aid organisation that is active in 69 countries, serves populations affected by epidemics, armed conflicts, natural calamities and manmade disasters. MSF has relied heavily on generic drugs, much of which has been sourced from India, to deliver health care to some of the most...

Access to land and its resources is important since it determines the extent of poverty and deprivation one faces. Historically tribal populations and other traditional forest dwellers did not enjoy any legal entitlement such as ownership rights or user rights of the forest lands where they had been living since ages, both communally and individually. The Forest Rights Act (FRA) is, thus, seen as a progressive legislation that attempted to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With 927 incidents of child rapes reported in 2015, Delhi has no doubt become most unsafe for children. According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau data, at least three cases of rape took place every day in 2015, though police and child rights activists agree that the actual number could be much bigger. With Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act facilitating the registration of...

-The Hindu Ten million married men and 35 million married women in the north India were married as children, according to a detailed analysis of the 2011 Census data. Topping the list is Rajasthan, where almost one-third or 30 per cent of the currently married persons were victims of child marriage. Close on the heels is Madhya Pradesh at 26 per cent, followed by Uttar Pradesh and Haryana at 21 per cent...

-The Indian Express While crimes against Dalits are increasing, the state has time and again let them down, with little action against the perpetrators. Atrocities against Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are a regular feature of the caste-based Indian society and distressingly, of late, they have begun increasing. What is ironical is that only recently, the country commemorated the 125th birth anniversary of B .R. Ambedkar, the icon of the...